Genetic diversity in endangered Notopterygium forbesii Boissieu based on intraspecies sequence variation of chloroplast DNA and implications for conservation

►Chloroplast DNA sequences were used to study the genetic diversity and genetic structure of endangered plant, Notopterygium forbesii, while genetic diversity of many other endangered plants were studied using nuclear DNA markers, such as, ISSR, RAPD, AFLP. ►Many studies have demonstrated that endangered and endemic species tend to possess low levels of genetic diversity, whereas some others have shown opposite findings. In this study, we found that the value of haplotype diversity was high, and the level of nucleotide diversity was low. ►Low level of population differentiation between populations or between regions in cpDNA sequences may be due to effects of the abundance of ancestral haplotype sharing and the high number of private haplotypes fixed for each population.